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3. 04. 2017

Cassina 9.0: 2017-1927. Cassina 9.0 Installation: a 90 year destination, a new start for the future.

Cassina 9.0: an installation to mark the brand's 90th anniversary.Ninety years. A landmark anniversary celebrated as part of the 2017 Fuorisalone with a manifesto for the future: Cassina 9.0. Designed by Patricia Urquiola, the installation is a playful exploration that references progress and evolution, like computer language, as a necessary resource to reinterpret the company’s historical legacy. It is a free interpretation of the monograph “This Will Be The Place”, presented by Cassina during this event.

In a reaffirmation of the forward thinking and pioneering spirit of the brand, Cassina confirms its strong desire to connect the company’s past and present with a vision projected towards the future.

"This Will Be The Place": Ideas, proposals and visions of future living.Edited by Felix Burrichter and published by Rizzoli, the first part of the book collates four interviews and an essay involving five figures from the world of architecture and design, exploring contemporary social behaviour and its potential impact on the future of interiors. In the second part of the book, Cassina interprets these themes in five photographic scenarios: Free Flow, Artful Living, Playground, Back To The Roots and Bed Time.

A site-specific project.Cassina 9.0 has been developed in a new landmark for Milan, the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. This venue was specifically chosen for its intellectual, cultural and creative commitment to the city in terms of research into ideas and solutions aimed at building possible futures. Curated by Patricia Urquiola, the project is a site-specific installation that creates a dialogue with the space, respecting the building's architecture and the research conducted by the Foundation into the transformation of urban spaces and the dimensions of their inhabitants.

Disruption: interaction and experimentation.The journey begins on the first floor with a gest that divides the space following the diagonal shape of the building. This disruption wall is used to express how disruption, as designer Konstantin Grcic explains in the book “This Will Be The Place", is an opportunity to instigate change.

In the first part of the installation, characterised by the colour pink, virtual reality is embedded into real life. Within recognisable domestic environments, the visitor can relate to the Cassina products through unexpected interactive, engaging and ironic experiences that transform and change. The presence of works from the Cassina Archives emphasises the concept of the past as a foundation upon which to build the future.

A parallel reality.Green marks the entrance into another reality. In this area, the recreation of La Barca, the great sofa-island designed by Piero De Martini (1975), invites the visitor to share in an environment where everyone can blend in comfortably. This incorporates the concept of Free Flow, a fluid and limitless space expressed in the book by German architect Arno Brandlhuber. From here we enter the chroma key room, via which the visitor moves into a virtual dimension, immersed in the collages created for the book by artist Martti Kalliala. This leads us into a surreal dimension, playful like a Playground.

Understanding the past to look towards the future.Ascending to the highest point of the building, it is possible to visit the futuristic Refuge Tonneau which stands above the city like a lighthouse. Cassina faithfully reconstructed this portable mountain refuge, designed by Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret in 1938, to express the cultural values of the Modern architects. In this context, Refuge Tonneau is a symbol of the theme Back To The Roots, a manifesto for a return to nature, presented in the book by the young Chinese architect Zhao Yang as a response to urban densification.

A system to help us relate to our surrounding environment.During the day, visitors can use the new Soft Props sofa, designed by Konstantin Grcic for the 2017 Collection, in the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli reading room.

After 7pm, the space is transformed to welcome new activities: the distinction between public and private spaces vanish and movement condenses around the horizontal surfaces of the sofas. This is the Bed Time concept, as the architectural historian Beatriz Colomina explains in her interview: the 21st century will be the century of the bed, and thanks to technology we will be able to conduct so much more of our life from a horizontal position.

Horizontal Freedom, a performance to narrate the past in a contemporary tone.In the reading room on Wednesday and Thursday, a group of theatre actors meet with the visitor, engaging them in a performance that aims to bring the past closer to Cassina’s future.

The piece is inspired by the Kar-a-sutra project, the first prototype of a people carrier designed by Mario Bellini in 1972 with Dario Bellini, Francesco Binfaré and Gianfranco Origlia, and coordinated from the Cassina Research Centre in collaboration with C&B Italia, Citroën and Pirelli. Exhibited at MOMA as part of the New Domestic Landscape display, this innovative project responds to the user's need for maximum freedom and habitability in their living spaces, along with organised interiors to facilitate communication between passengers.

The performance will be projected on the same floor during the other times of the week.